Rediscovering Faith

Over the last 5 years my faith has undergone a process of being shaken, rejected, reborn, and refined, in mostly that order.

I thought I had most things figured out upon graduating from Bible college with a Bible major in 2014. I learned how to do good hermeneutical study, could name the dates of Israel’s exile and return among other fun OT facts, and could map out the timeline of Acts and the early church. I had good apologetic arguments ready to throw at anyone who didn’t believe what I did.

It didn’t take long, however, for life to shake my prideful self.

What I hadn’t learned as a sheltered Bible college student was how to deal with suffering. Prior to attending college, I definitely experienced painful things. My childhood and adolescent years had their fair share of challenges… but nothing to the degree of my struggles in my mid to late 20’s.

Within a 3 year timeframe after finishing graduate school, I experienced profound struggles in my marriage, challenges working in and eventually leaving a very toxic job, financial difficulties, and an intense health crisis marked by brutal insomnia, really bad anxiety and depression, and a deep spiritual darkness.

Thanks be to God for shepherding me towards healing through the people in my life at that time. I am foreever grateful for them.

In that season of my life, I saw a darkness I had never known. I learned that God does not make all the decisions for us. He gives us free will and choice. In our thoughts, words, and actions, we either choose life or death. Thankfully, I chose life.

Fast forward to 2022 when I had my first daughter. Her birth and life has led to so much joy. And, there’s nothing like children to rustle up mess from the past that you’ve been shoving in your closet, pretending it’s not there. For me, one of these challenges (or let’s say opportunities) has been to work through more questions surrounding my faith.

Seeking Truth, Struggling with Control

In this season, I’ve focused on finding the truth. Specifically, in regards to my faith, I’ve looked hard at science and the nature of our world, and where the Bible fits into it. I’ve come to respect science for all that it reveals to us, and the Bible as a divinely inspired book filled with wisdom, principles, and laws, teaching us about God, his redemptive story, and how we fit into it.

While I still have questions (specifically, I’m so curious how dinosaurs fit into all of this and if aliens really exist), I’m learning how to integrate science with my faith, and no longer see science as a barrier (special thanks to my very sciency-minded, black-hole loving husband who encourages me to not shy away from facts).

In this truth-seeking season, I’m looking at why I believe what I believe, while looking square in the face of my doubts instead of turning away.

Much of my struggle with faith is that I want something or someone who I can control. I want to know all the answers. I want to understand everything. I want to make sure what I believe in is right. Uncertainty and ambiguity makes me anxious and I don’t like it.

My temptation here is to try and figure it all out. To make faith rationally work.

In my need for answers I’ll go on a mission to find the right book, or the right explanation, or the right person who can make sense of it all. I’m the one who will spend hours searching through peer-reviewed articles trying to find archeological evidence on the Israelites exodus from Egypt (Long story short: no one agrees on much of anything. Isn’t that how it always is?!).

This approach only leaves me more confused, without answers, and really irritated for wasting time.

I also recently dabbled in a post-modern, relativistic way of interpreting the Bible, and I learned that this doesn’t work either. There’s no truth to stand on when everything is dependent on your interpretation. For example, if you have the responsibility of “reimagining God” in your time and place, as some would say, how do you know you’re actually experiencing God and not your own ideas about him? All of this is making a god out of your own interpretations and preferences. That’s not a god I want to put my faith in.

This, too, is a dangerous route to go.

What Faith Is

So, after some deep searching I’ve recently rediscovered what faith is:

Faith isn’t running from difficult questions, or being afraid of the truth. It’s a holding fast to the truth of God while looking honestly and openly at big questions, making space at the same time for God to be bigger than our own understanding and finite ways of thinking.

Faith is a letting go of rigid rules or expectations about how God should act. It’s also a letting go of judgements about others and the way they process their faith. It’s being humble, curious, and loving in the grey areas.

Faith is believing like Abraham (his faith wasn’t instant, by the way, it was nurtured over and over again by God’s patience and grace) the promises of God: We are protected, held in his blessing, adopted as his beloved child, and sheltered and covered by his goodness. No circumstances can remove this — even those resulting from our own sin and rebellion.

Faith is a product and an expression of love. Could we truly love God in the same way if he gave us all the answers about himself? Love requires faith. Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t know all that we’d like to.

Faith is one big trust-fall into the arms of a gracious Father whose steadfast love fills the hole in my heart so much so that I cannot help but believe its all true. Truly, the love of God is the biggest piece of “evidence” for my belief, it’s what nourishes my faith when I am weak.

Some say it’s “too good to be true.”

I say, “It’s so good, it must be true.”